If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Metro Police have arrested and charged a man with rape and attempted rape and York Regional Police have reason to believe he is the same man wanted in connection with similar crimes in the Don Mills - Steeles Avenue East, area.

Detective Sergeant Robert Wilson, in charge of the York Region investigation, said if and when the accused man is released by Toronto police, he will face charges resulting from a rash of incidents not far from Markham Place Mall, Thornhill, including three counts of abduction, one count of rape, two counts of attempted rape and two counts of indecent assault.

Murray MacDonald, manager of the shopping centre, said he is relieved the situation is now under control, especially for the sake of female employees.

Noting there was constant surveillance of the community around the mall, he felt thanks to York Region Police for their efforts were in order.

Detective Sergeant Wilson said the charges of abduction arose when a man (on three occasions) grabbed women by the arm at knifepoint and led them to secluded areas of the neighborhood.

Twice, victims were able to escape but another was taken to a vacant townhouse and raped.

"Our charges are different from those Metro laid in connection with incidents in Scarborough. Those acts happened inside cars but the ones up here included taking the victims from one place to another - that's abduction," said the Detective Sergeant.

Charged with rape and attempted rape by Metropolitan Toronto Police is Raymond Wallace, 31, of Brookbanks Road in Don Mills.

An 18-year-old Thornhill girl motorist was stopped and dragged into a field in Markham near Buttonville at 11:15 pm by a would-be rapist. But she escaped serious harm when another came by and the youthful attacker fled in his (the attacker's) vehicle, police say.

Later, following an investigation, York Regional Police Detective Sergeant John Mocrhead and Detective Dick Witteman arrested a 16-year-old youth at an office at 2205 Midland Avenue, Toronto.

Held in custody for a bail hearing at Richmond Hill Court was Michael Kloc of 162 Bayview Fairways Drive, Thornhill. Police said Kloc was already out on bail and facing a May charge of rape in a Metro court. YRP charged Kloc with attempted rape and with impersonating a police officer.

The lone girl motorist told YRP her attacker followed her in a vehicle, pulled her over and stopped her, saying he was a police office. When he got her out of her car he pulled her into the field on Concession 5 road north of Highway 7.

He was struggling with her on the ground when the other motorist came along and frightened the attacker away. The girl fortunately suffered nothing more than minor abrasions, said police, who declined to reveal her name.

At a bail hearing, Provincial Judge Russell Pearce issued a detention order for Kloc until trial, ordering that the youth be brought back to the court from Don Jail weekly. A late August trial date was expected.

Note: Kloc was likely in jail at the time of Tracy's murder, but clearly as shown with him out already on bail while committing this crime, anything is possible in Canada's lax justice system. He can't be discounted until his whereabouts at the time nearly one year to the day later are confirmed. I haven't been able to find any further information on Kloc as of yet.

Kloc lived just over 1 km from Tracy and quite possible went to school or at least knew Tracy.

Below is a link to a Google Maps showing the locations of Tracy's murder and numerous sexual assaults and rapes in the vicinity from 1970-1980.

●The decomposed body of 45-year-old Phyllis Farquhar was discovered on Friday, November 23rd, 1979 under an old mattress behind her apartment on Edgewood Ave. She had been stabbed. The apartment superintendent notified police when he hadn’t seen Farquhar since early October and she hadn’t paid her rent.Ironically, Farquhar had been a witness in a stabbing-murder court case back in 1964.

●Cindy Halliday, 17, disappeared on Monday, April 20th, 1992 after she attempted to hitchhike from Barrie, Ontario (100 km north of Toronto) to her mother’s home in Waverley, 30 km north of Barrie. Halliday, a habitual runaway, had spent April 19th at a dance in Penetanguishene, then hitchhiked south to Barrie to visit her jailed boyfriend, and then headed north for home. The last sighting of Halliday was of her trying to thumb a ride in front of the Hasty Market on Hwy 27 in Midhurst between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. on the 20th. Four witnesses who later came forward said they saw her get into a light-coloured older model Chrysler LeBaron or Dodge Diplomat driven by a single male.A man walking his dog found her skull on Sunday, June 21st in a forest off Horseshoe Valley Rd. about 2 km east of Hwy 27. The rest of her remains were found by police 500 metres to the east of where her skull was located. An autopsy revealed Halliday had been stabbed, but, due to decomposition, it could not be determined if she had been sexually assaulted. Further tests conducted almost two years after her body was found showed Halliday may have been alive for up to a month after she disappeared. Similarities between Halliday’s murder and that of university student Lynda Shaw two years earlier near Woodstock led police to believe the two might have been committed by the same person. At one time, notorious serial killer Paul Bernardo was a suspect. Link: www.opp.ca/Intranetdev/groups/public/documents/investigative/opp_001222.pdf

●On Sunday, December 4th, 1983, art teacher Thomas Cahill was stabbed to death in his home on Berkeley St. Charles Furlong, a tenant in Cahill’s house, had heard Cahill talking to someone downstairs, and then, at 4:45 a.m., he heard Cahill call his name. When Furlong came downstairs, he found the front door open and Cahill lying in a pool of his own blood. Police believed Cahill was stabbed by a departing visitor. He had spent Saturday night at the Parkside Tavern on Yonge St.Comments: I wonder if this case is related to the murder of Graham Pearce (see previous post)? Both Pearce and Cahill were apparently gay men stabbed in their homes in the post-midnight hours, both had spent their last nights at the Parkside Tavern, and both were killed in 1983.

●At 2:15 a.m. on Sunday, November 17th, 1985, the body of Lorelei Brose, 19, was found with a bullet to the head in a room in the Inglewood Arms hotel on Jarvis St. She was found fully clothed and had not been robbed. Police were alerted after hotel employees received complaints of a woman’s screams. Brose was a prostitute who frequented the Jarvis-Gerrard Sts. area. Many of Brose’s fellow prostitutes raised the theory that Brose had been slain by a contract killer hired to settle a personal dispute. Brose was known to rip off her clients.

●Marie Woods, a 31-year-old single mother of a six-year-old daughter, vanished on September 21st, 1981. Her Subaru station wagon was found abandoned on Oct. 5th at the Scarborough Town Centre. Police found no clues to her disappearance in her home or car. Although there was no specific evidence immediately to suggest she had been abducted, Woods had a normal life, a well-paying job, and the responsibility of her daughter, suggesting she wouldn’t have left of her own volition. Then, five years later, in November, 1986, remains later identified as Woods were found in Newmarket, about 50 km north of where her car was abandoned. Police had a strong suspect in the early ‘90s, Peter Stark, who had once dated Woods and was convicted of the 1990 murder of a teenage girl, but there was apparently never enough evidence to lay charges. At least, I could find no reference to an arrest in this case.As a tragic postscript, Woods’s daughter Jennifer died of cancer at age 14 in September, 1989.

On Monday, April 21, 2003, at around 10.35 p.m., a man entered the Daisy Mart Variety Store at 1174 Morningside Avenue. He approached the lone female clerk who was behind the counter and pointed a silver handgun at her, demanding cash.

Mohamad Nakib-Arbaji, a 53-year-old self-employed taxi driver, tried to stop the robbery by grabbing the suspect. During the struggle, he was shot and collapsed on the floor.

Police in Ontario turning to Facebook in an effort to get leads in cold cases

Ontario Provincial Police and local police say four people believed to be victims of foul play in or near Barrie, Ont., will be profiled in episodic videos posted to a dedicated page on Facebook called Simcoe County Case Files.

Police have also wrapped a cube van with case information to direct viewers to the Facebook page and encourage tips. The van will be strategically parked in various locations throughout the Greater Simcoe County area.

Seventeen-year-old Cindy Halliday of Waverley, Ont., was last seen hitchhiking near Midhurst, Ont., on April 20, 1992. She had been visiting a friend in Barrie, and her remains were discovered in a wooded area of Springwater Township on June 17, 1992.

Two British Columbia residents -- 21-year-old Grant Ayerst and 36-year-old Norman Whalley -- were last seen leaving a Toronto hotel on Sept. 11, 1991. They are considered missing, but investigators say foul play in the Barrie area is suspected in their cases.

And 40-year-old April Dobson was sitting on a porch at a friend's home in Barrie when she was shot to death on Oct. 14, 2005.

OPP Supt. Jim Smyth urged people to look at the Facebook page and share the videos on other social media platforms in an effort to reach as many people with potential information as possible.

Smyth said police are hoping to use “the power of social media and how it tends to mushroom and go all over the place” to generate tips in the cases.

“Essentially, they’re very solvable cases,” he said. “We’re looking for that piece of information that we firmly believe is out there.”

New information will be posted to the Facebook page about every second day over the next few weeks, Smyth said.
Barrie Police Chief Kimberley Greenwood described the approach as a pilot project and said its success would determine if it would be used in other cases.

June 14, 2017 A reward is being offered for information that could help police in the investigation of two men who disappeared more than 20 years ago.
The province announced on Wednesday a $50,000 reward in the case of Grant Ayerst and Norman Whalley.
The two men were last seen together on Sept. 11, 1991 leaving a Toronto-area hotel. The pair was known to travel to Barrie.

On this day, June 26, in 1995, Holly Painter went missing and is presumed murdered. Surprised not see an update in the news for this case.
Holly was working at the Save the Rouge Valley System, and was looking forward to buying a pair of climbing shoes on the day she was last known to be getting a drive from a male and a female "friend".
Holly's bank card was used in New York, but Holly has still not been located.